


Someday We'll Meet

by ama



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Violence, Nightmares, Period-Typical Homophobia, Romance, Secret Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4515726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eddie is fifteen, the mark appears on his body: A. A. Haldane, written in neat letters on his left hip. Nobody really knows what the marks mean, but obviously he's pretty sure A. A. Haldane must be his soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someday We'll Meet

**Author's Note:**

> I did a lot of thinking about the implication of soulmate marks on the universe, and ended up deciding that... they don't have quite as much influence as one would think. Marriage has been about so many things other than true love for so long--and literacy rates fluctuate so wildly depending on class, gender, race, location etc--that I felt justified in preserving an alternate 1940s that is still tainted with racism and homophobia (although that does not play a huge part in this fic), just because altering that would take way more worldbuilding than I meant to do for a 5k fun trope fic.

_Someday we'll meet_  
_And you'll dry all my tears_  
_Then whisper sweet_  
_Little things in my ear_  
_Hugging and a-kissing_  
_Oh, what I've been missing_  
_Lover man, oh, where can you be?_

\--  **"Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?),"**  Billie Holiday

 

They appear when he is fifteen. Eddie is tall and gangly and awkward, just dropped out of high school, perpetually exasperated at his gaggle of siblings, and the appearance of neat words at his hipbone are a happy surprise. The placement is awkward, though, and he keeps their emergence a secret. Late that evening he steals a handheld mirror from his sister’s drawer and goes outside, where he won’t be interrupted, to try and read the words written on his skin. _A. A. Haldane_. He huffs, annoyed at the initials—he knows it happens sometimes, and some people are lucky to make out three letters in the messy scrawls left on their bodies, but it’s _inconsiderate_ , he thinks. The handwriting is large and square, and you would think that someone who took the trouble to be so neat could also take the trouble to write her full name.

But at the same time, he can’t push down his delight, and there’s a fondness to his annoyance. He thinks he’ll tease her about it, when he finds her. He’s fairly certain he’ll find her, because he’s never heard the name Haldane before so it can’t be that common—nothing like Jones. They’ll laugh about it. Grinning at the thought, Eddie returns to the house and slips the mirror back into Maida’s room, and goes to bed.

-

No one knows what they really mean. The most popular theory, beloved by Hollywood, is that the name indicates your soulmate, but this is not universally accepted. You always get a few people who declare that they can’t _stand_ their named person or some who are indifferent. People have happy marriages despite their names. Some people have no names at all, or have only a shaky X or O, so they can’t be expected to wait around for their soulmate with no help, can they?

And after all, some point out, it can’t be _just_ that, because some men have men’s names and some women have women’s, and some people have several, and some people have names in unfamiliar alphabets or names that belong to people of different races, and that won’t do, will it? (Some people suggest that these things may not disprove the soulmate theory, but they do so in quiet voices and are often ignored.) So perhaps the names indicate, simply, someone who is attached to you in some other, less specific way. Your best friend. Someone with something important to teach you. Someone who will save your life.

Andy Haldane stares at the name on his chest and tries to console himself with these thoughts.

He’s not _really_ disappointed. He feels discouraged, a bit, because it’s probably a man’s name written on his body and that always makes things difficult. People either tease you or get awkward and patronizing, and he doesn’t want to deal with that. And it makes things harder, too, getting married when you don’t have a name to help you. But despite all that, he still has that sensation in his stomach that everyone talks about nostalgically. The flutter of happiness, nervousness, expectation. You try to tell yourself it’s not _that_ serious, because you don’t want to be let down later, but you can’t really help it. It doesn’t matter if the named person isn’t his soulmate—he’s _someone_ , someone important, and Andy believes in God and he believes that these things matter. He trusts that something good will come of this.

It’s a good feeling, and he’s glad that his name is finally here. It’s written sideways in the middle of his chest, so he has to stand in a mirror and tilt his head to read it—and even then it’s not easy, because the handwriting is a loose scrawl, and it took him a few minutes to pick out each letter.

 _Eddie Jones_.

-

Eddie joins the Marines because he needs a career that isn’t mining or working in a shop. So he becomes a Marine, and for the first time in his life he feels like he _fits_. He was happy at home, and of course he loves his family and his friends, but in the Corps he feels like he’s becoming who he is supposed to be. Every once in a while he lies in his bunk and lets his fingers rest on the name on his hip and he feels slightly guilty, but he hopes that she will wait. _Everything happens in its own time_ , his mother always says, and he thinks of A. A. Haldane and hopes that she is patient.

There is no privacy in the Marines. Sometimes people joke about his name—particularly its placement, which lends itself easily to crude teasing—but Eddie just shrugs it off and smiles. It’s worse for Ted Coburn, a private from Washington state, who has five Asian marks on his left forearm. He gets mocked much more often than Eddie does, but he seems used to it and he ignores most comments. He has a girl back home anyway, he says, a white girl named Carol whose mark is an illiterate X, and they’re happy together and that’s that.

Once, he and Eddie have guard duty together and he confides to Eddie that he asked a Japanese shopkeeper from the town over to read his mark. _Yoshida Sachiko_ is the name, Yoshida being the family name and Sachiko being her own name. His voice is a little wistful, but Eddie doesn’t comment.

“Don’t mean anything, of course,” he says belatedly. “I mean, me and Carol, we’re perfect for each other. And I don’t know any Sachiko—and neither did the fellow I asked. He said he knew pretty much all the Japanese within a few miles and there weren’t any Yoshidas. So it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees.

“How ’bout you?” he asks.

“I don’t know any Haldanes and I don’t know how to go about finding any—hell, if I said I lived in a small town I’d be lying. You couldn’t even call it a town. So if I’m gonna find her, it’s going to take a lot of luck and some good will from God.”

“I _think_ it’s a Scottish name; I’ve got some cousins called Haldene and that’s pretty close, isn’t it?” Coburn says thoughtfully. Then he grins and elbows Eddie’s ribs. “Hey, how do you even know it’s a her? You only got initials, don’t you?”

“Real funny, Coburn,” Eddie snorts. “You should tell Sachiko that one—I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”

A familiar uneasy feeling squirms in his stomach, and—like always—he squashes it back down.

-

There are over six hundred Edward Joneses in Massachusetts, plus another six hundred Edmunds, Ediths, Ednas, or Edwins. That’s not even checking the other seventy thousand Joneses in the other forty-seven states.

 _Your move_ , Andy thinks glumly, and is comforted by the fact that, as far as he can tell, he is the only Andrew Allison Haldane in the country.

-

War banishes a lot of things from his mind. He prefers it that way. Some guys like to indulge in what-ifs, but Eddie likes to focus on what he knows. Where he is, where he needs to be, what he needs to do, who the Marines expect him to be. These are just about the only things he can rely on—and even then sometimes they, too, are in jeopardy. Uncertainty, fear, frustration, and misery nip at his heels, just like they do every other Marine, but he does his best to keep them at bay. He doesn’t think of A. A. Haldane at all, except when he lies in his foxhole at night and finds his hand resting on the familiar mark on his side.

And then, after several months on Guadalcanal, his company is sent to bolster K Company, which is stretched thin across a precarious section of the jungle known for being a sentry’s delight. No one is happy about this, and they grumble as they march, but Eddie’s lieutenant tells him (and asks him to pass around) that K Company has some good officers in its ranks, and the enlisted men who have survived thus far are good at what they do. Eddie isn’t entirely sure that this will comfort his men, but he relays the info. They reach their destination eventually and Eddie stands back as his lieutenant has a murmured conversation with K Company’s officers, occasionally gesturing to the line. They’re dug in good there, but Eddie can tell that some of the well-concealed and bomb-battered foxholes are empty, leaving gaps in the line.

His lieutenant comes back, clamping a cigarette between his teeth.

“They haven’t seen any Japs for the past two days,” he reports. “But they keep sending patrols, so we should expect some action tonight. For now, we’re not going to mix the companies—they’ll take the south side and we’ll take north. Lieutenant Haldane—”

Eddie jumps.

“What, you know him?” the lieutenant asks.

“Um. No sir. Must be someone else,” he lies, tripping over the words because he’s not all that good at lying. “Sorry, sir.”

“Anyway, Haldane says we’re going to have to bunch up for now. Tomorrow, after the Japs come around, we’ll dig some more holes.”

Eddie nods and starts directing the company into their designated foxholes. It’s a coincidence, he tells himself. Just a coincidence.

-

A bullet scrapes the top of Andy’s helmet, and then two hands shove roughly at his back and, in the mud, he slips. The second bullet hits the ground behind him, and the third—there is no third, except the one that leaves the barrel of a Springfield rifle and disappears into the thick jungle canopy. It is followed by a rapid fourth and fifth, and in the breathless silence that follows, the body of a Japanese sniper falls from the tree. Andy watches as it hits the ground, his heart careening, then he stands up and bypasses the faces of the chagrined Marines who “cleared the area,” to look at the sergeant who saved his life.

“How did you spot him so quickly?” he asks in a conversational voice—even he is shocked that he’s not shaking.

“Lucky guess, sir,” the sergeant says. “I saw the platoon scoping this area and I didn’t think that side was properly searched. I ought to have gone over it myself, but…”

His eyes twitch towards a lieutenant who is resolutely staring at the skyline, and Andy understands.

“Right. Your name’s Jones, correct?”

“Yes sir,” he says. It seems to Andy that he hesitates, but he doesn’t say anything.

“First name?”

“Edward, sir.”

Andy isn’t even surprised. But this isn’t the first Edward Jones he’s ever met, and his face doesn’t change.

“It was you going between the foxholes during our last encounter, wasn’t it? And giving advice to Shelton and Bingham the other night? And you led the scouting patrol in the northwest area last week?”

“All correct, sir,” Jones replies, clearly puzzled.

“I thought so. Well, listen, Jones, if the Corps ever gets us off this island, and the both of us are still alive, I’m putting you in for a commission.”

-

That evening Eddie eats his wormy rice squatting in the mud with a few other NCOs who rib him about his commission. He grins and accepts their teasing, but his thoughts are somewhere else—in a small clearing due west, perhaps. He excuses himself after a few minutes and says he’s going to stretch his legs. He lights a cigarette and wanders over to the K Company side of the line. A grizzled sergeant looks at him approvingly—Haney, he thinks. Confirmed Asiatic, admired by every man in the First Marines.

“Good catch on the Skipper, Jones. Can’t trust these fuckin’ boots with anything.”

“Aw, don’t be harsh, Gunny,” a private drawls with a grin. “Ack-Ack always makes it out all right, don’t he?’

“No thanks to you, Shelton.”

“Hey, I wasn’t even on that patrol…”

“Where’s ‘Ack-Ack’ come from?” Eddie asks abruptly, and they both look at him.

“Massachusetts, I think.”

“No, I mean—why do you call him that?”

“’Cuz of his initials,” Shelton says. “They’re A. A. H. His first name’s Andrew and—what’s the other one? Agatha or Anne or Allison. Somethin’ that’s a girl’s name too.”

“Huh. Thanks.”

Eddie slides back into his foxhole and rests his head against the wall, his heart pounding somewhere in his throat. He doesn’t know what to do with this information. He likes Lieutenant Haldane; everyone does, and Eddie gets the feeling that he is more than a good Marine, but a good man, the kind who is easy to talk to. He doesn’t judge people. But still, it’s not polite to just go up to someone and ask about their mark, not if you don’t know them well. It has—well, _implications_ , and he’s not sure how he would feel if he knew the answer.

It occurs to him that he ought to do the same thing he’s done so far: just push it out of his mind. After all, he doesn’t have to decide what to do until—unless—he and Haldane both make it off of Guadalcanal alive.

-

“Congratulations, lieutenant,” Andy says, smiling at the man sitting in front of him, who still looks a bit shocked that this is happening. “Have you given any thought to which company you’d like to transfer to?”

“A bit,” Jones says slowly. “I thought… K Company seemed a good fit to me, sir. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not in the slightest. I should probably tell you that it’s by no means obligatory, just because I was the one who recommended you; I would respect your decision if you wanted to go elsewhere.”

“Thank you, Lieu—Captain Haldane, but I really prefer K Company. I think we’d work well together.”

“I agree.”

He writes out a note to Colonel Puller and signs it, and notices that Jones’ eyes are fixed on his signature. He nods to himself when Andy puts his pen down, and Andy’s heart starts pounding. He stands.

“I don’t have any duties for you today, not until your transfer goes through. Is there anything else you needed?”

Jones stands, too.

“No thank you sir, I think I’m all set.”

He hesitates and they lock eyes, and before Andy knows what’s happening, he is being kissed. He closes his eyes and falls into it, allowing his hands to rest on the other man’s waist and his body to melt against him. His heart leaps. He can’t think of anything except _you found me_ , and _yes_ , his soul cries, _yes this is what it means, this is what I’ve been waiting for_.

Eddie pulls away after a moment, breathing hard for no reason at all, his eyes wide. Andy reaches up and touches his cheek.

“Eddie…” he whispers, and then he decides he doesn’t know what else to say and presses a soft kiss to his lips.

-

His name is written on Andy’s chest. It is usually hidden, because it is placed just where the dog tags fall. He sees it for the first time when Andy is undressing in a hotel room in Melbourne and he makes him stop, so Eddie can reach out and run his fingers over the loopy letters. It’s his signature, obviously. From the big, sloppy E to the half-hearted squiggle of the s, it is his handwriting and that, somehow, feels even more awe-inspiring than having Andy’s name on his own body. How did it appear, he wonders? When he himself had no idea that this man existed, something out there knew, and knew that he would love him. He presses his lips to the mark and Andy runs his fingers through Eddie’s curls, holding him close.

They spend days in each other’s arms, in bed, in a hotel in Melbourne. The days are not consecutive and the hotels are rarely the same, but it hardly matters. Eddie relishes Andy’s name on his lips and the thousand different ways he can say it—breathlessly, laughingly, growling, muffled by an arm or lips or a pillow, teasingly, shouting.

“You are going to be the death of me,” Andy says one night. Eddie grins and he smiles back, still catching his breath. He takes Eddie’s hand and kisses his knuckles, the back of his hand, his wrist.

“Fuck,” Eddie exhales. Andy looks up innocently.

“What?”

“Nothing.” _I can’t believe I fell so hard so quickly._ “I used to be terrified of finding you.”

“Why?”

“I can’t remember.”

-

Sometimes they have to get out of bed. Sometimes they even talk about serious things, reasonable things—Andy can even manage to go a whole half hour without telling Eddie “I love you” and kissing him senseless. Mostly they discuss the war, and the company, and he knows already that Eddie is a shrewd leader and will prove more than worthy of his commission. K Company soon grows used to the sight of them walking together, and the familiar looks they receive make him feel good. Even if the men don’t realize how close they are (and, he sometimes thinks in the back of his mind, that’s a big _if_ given Marines’ love for gossip), they realize that they fit perfectly and easily. He feels like they are _partners_ more than lovers, steady and dependable. He loves it.

“You don’t have to answer if you’d rather not—but do your parents have each other’s names?” he asks thoughtfully one afternoon over steak and eggs in a restaurant. Eddie looks amused by his tone.

“Oh yeah. Found each other at sixteen, got married at eighteen, happily raised ten kids and four dogs.”

“Wow.”

“Mm-hm. My dad was in an accident a while back—must be twelve or thirteen years now—and he can’t walk anymore, so I had to help run around after my younger brothers and sisters, but it didn’t really change much. It’s rough on him sometimes, you know, but they’re always happy together. More than once I’ve heard people in our town say the whole soulmate thing is total bullshit, and someone shuts ’em up by saying ‘Oh yeah, well then how do you explain the Joneses?’” Andy chuckles and Eddie grins at him. “Yours?”

“My mother doesn’t have one. She’s happy about that, actually. According to her, it’s proof that she was able to sensibly choose a man who would be a good husband and father, rather than be taken in by fate and charm.”

Eddie laughs and pushes away his empty plate. A waitress comes with their bill, and he pays and waits until she leaves before he speaks again.

“What about your dad?”

“A girl from his hometown. She died. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yes… anyway, he moved here—to America, rather. They’ve always been happy. Maybe not ten-kids-and-four-dogs happy, but…” Eddie pauses in the middle of taking a sip from his beer, and grins. “So I always knew, growing up, that the names aren’t the be-all-end-all of love. But still—I wondered what it would feel like.”

Eddie looks at him with a strange, piercing look that makes him forget they are in a crowded restaurant. He taps two fingers on the table rhythmically, not paying attention, and Andy tries to hold his gaze.

“And now?” Eddie asks quietly.

“I don’t know. I’ve never _not_ had it. I’ve never known that it was impossible to rely on it. I can’t describe how it feels when it feels so natural. It’s like—being asked how it feels to breathe oxygen.”

“No remorse?” Eddie teases him.

“None.”

They leave the diner and Eddie lights a cigarette and asks about chain of command. How is it best, does Andy think, to treat old-salt NCOs versus new-blood commissioned officers? How strictly will the lieutenant/captain division be treated, and what does each role encompass? He can recite chapter and verse from the Marine Corps’ official protocol, but there are some things that are left unspecified, and Eddie wants to specify each and every one. They stroll down the sunny street, seriously discussing scenarios that have a one-in-a-thousand chance of actually occurring, and Andy can’t help smile the entire time.

-

“How can you know Danny Boy but not Loch Lomond?” Andy laughs, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

“Gee, Skipper, I don’t know, maybe it’s ’cuz there are about fifty Irish guys in this unit who sing Danny Boy at the drop of a hat. I just pick things up as I go along.”

Andy shakes his head and leans back on his bunk, giving a half-hearted kick at one of the Pavuvu rats that skitters past his feet. Eddie reminds sitting, absently strumming his guitar because the vibrations rolling through the wooden body are soothing. He’d made his rounds of the enlisted men’s tents earlier, playing for them, keeping an eye out for how they’re doing. Nobody _likes_ Pavuvu, and a few of their men are still suffering from malaria, dysentery, and the mental and physical wounds of Gloucester, but they’re doing okay. They’re glad to have a break. Eddie, too, is grateful for the opportunity to sit in the sun, to play his guitar, to return to a semi-private tent with Andy at the end of the day.

“When the war is over,” Andy says cautiously, “You’ll have to visit my family in Massachusetts. My dad would sing Loch Lomond until you cried of boredom. It’s my mom’s favorite song; he sings it all the time.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything. Andy is silent for a moment, and then he continues. He talks about diners, trips to Boston, rocky beaches, quiet family dinners, baseball games in the street, snowy afternoons, records, and the places where couples go when they want to be alone. He makes promises that make Eddie extremely glad that no one else shares their tent. He smiles and listens and dreams. After a while, he stows his guitar away and lies down, yawning.

“I want to show you the mountains,” he says. “We’ll go camping one night. Just you, me, and some moonshine.”

Andy laughs at that.

“Sounds perfect. Don’t forget the guitar.” He lets out a soft breath, and Eddie closes his eyes. He hears Andy singing softly. “ _Oh, ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye… Where me and my true love will never meet again, on the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond…_ ”

-

This is what panic feels like. Panic, the worst fear of every Marine, the one thing that will kill him more certainly than a sniper’s bullet. Panic, which seizes his limbs and spurs his heart to reckless paces, panic which lets him look at nothing, think of nothing except the stretcher picking its way too slowly back from the front line. The company is retreating, Andy has told them to retreat, but he doesn’t move from his spot.

The four men carrying the stretcher lower it to the ground and he is there in an instant, Eddie’s name on his lips.

For a heart-shattering second, everything is still and silent. He can feel the eyes of every Marine in the area on him. They know—of course they know, there is no such thing as privacy in the Marines and by now they’ve all seen Andy’s name written proudly on Eddie’s skin. They know, but they will never say anything to him. Only watch him with pity in their gazes.

Then Eddie winces and turns his head.

“Eddie?” he repeats, relief making his voice weak.

“Got shot,” he mumbles, lifting his left shoulder to reveal his second wound. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“Get him to an aid station. _Now_ ,” Andy orders Snafu. Snafu nods, uncharacteristically alert, and Andy knows that he sounds more stern than usual. “Better yet, find a corpsman who will arrange transport to a hospital.”

“Not that bad,” Eddie says.

“Jones—” He can think of a million things he wants to say, and his jaw works uselessly for a moment. Most of them shouldn’t be said in front of their men; several of them are too anxious or angry; all of them are too long to get into now, when every second of delay is another in which Eddie lies bleeding on the ground. “Shut up,” he says instead. Eddie smiles weakly.

“Yessir. You heard the cap’n, boys, let’s go,” he calls out, his usual strong voice wavering, and immediately four Marines lift him onto their shoulders and start to carry him away. The company has almost completely retreated from the area, and the bursts of artillery and machine gunfire have lessened. Andy should stand, but his legs feel weak. He takes his helmet off and runs a hand through his hair, and then leans back against a rock and watches the departing stretcher.

-

He has nightmares almost every night. Vivid, unending nightmares that start off mostly as memories. Andy in the jungle, beneath a tree that rustles ominously. Andy creeping around outcroppings of rock towards a heavily-fortified position. He watches, heart pumping wildly, trying to convince himself that he knows the endings to these moments—Andy returns, unharmed, and looks at Eddie with reassuring brown eyes and a tiny smile. He loves that smile, that beautiful smile, not too wide to attract attention, just big enough for him to see, only him, no one else.

But in the dreams, Andy turns around just as a bullet pierces the back of his helmet and then his skull, and he falls facedown into the mud, onto the rocks. Two enlisted men drag him back to the encampment and turn him over.

“They got him good,” Shelton says, shaking his head. “Hell, you ever seen a shot like that?”

“Damn fine shot,” Gunny Haney agrees with a nod. “Too bad, huh, Hillbilly?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, without meaning to, and to his horror his own voice is as calm and casual as any of theirs. “Too bad.”

He leans down to yank one of the dog tags from around Andy’s neck and finds nothing beneath it. Bare, tanned skin covered in sores and cuts, but no name. He wants to check his but he can’t make his body move the way he wants, and then he wakes up, covered in cold sweat and sometimes blood. He thrashes in his sleep, the nurses tell him exasperatedly, and sometimes tears his stitches.

Once, he wakes and can’t help himself. He stares at the nurse redressing his bandages, and musters up the courage to ask her, feebly, for a mirror. He can’t bend his upper body too much or it hurts like hell, but he thinks that if he tilts the mirror enough and bends his head forward, he might be able to see the solid signature on his hip. If it’s still there.

“What for?” she asks, surprised.

“I want to check something,” he says. He tries to hold her gaze, but he can’t help but let his eyes flicker towards his left side, and her face softens in annoying sympathy.

“Nothing makes them go away, you know,” she says. “Not death or rashes or wounds or anything. They even grow back with scar tissue. And besides, you didn’t get hit on that side.”

“I know. I just wanted to check.” He pauses and asks impulsively, “You can see it?”

“Plain as day.” She reaches over and taps each word as she says it, and Eddie slumps against his pillows.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome. Go easy on those stitches now, all right?”

He promises to be careful and falls asleep with his hand on his mark, but the nightmares come back, night after night.

-

_Dear Eddie,_

_The South Pacific is done with me. I got pinged in the helmet again and, without you there to pull me to safety, had a nasty fall among some rocks and broke my leg. The corpsmen tell me I’m lucky to be alive, in such disapproving voices that I almost want to tell them that I’ve learned my lesson and will die properly next time. But the leg will take time to heal, and my ankle is fractured so badly that I am told I can expect to walk with a limp for the rest of my life. Between all these things, and the length of my service, the Corps has seen fit to cycle me home. I am loathe to leave my company—even more so, to leave them in the hands of an officer who isn’t you—but there is nothing to be done._

_I don’t quite know where you are, and I don’t know where I will be when you read this letter, but I hope it finds you quickly and relieves you of any anxiety you may have. I am okay. I managed to survive almost three whole weeks without you by my side!_

_I have not been able to get any concrete assurances of your future, but I hope that you, too, will be back in the States soon, and on your feet sooner than I am. If so, please write me immediately. I imagine that the Corps will begrudgingly allow us a few days’ or (God willing) weeks’ leave at some point, and I want to see you for myself and make sure you are okay, and make good on some of my wartime promises. I owe you, I think, a beer, a bowl of clam chowder, a record of Scottish songs, and a pick-up baseball game. Possibly other things that I have forgotten, and of which you must remind me._

_If you are expected to have an easy recovery and a swift return to the front lines… then I expect you to keep your own promises (moonshine, mountains, etc.) in mind, and I rely on you to look after my men. Our men. God bless you and keep you always, and stay safe._

_Warm regards,_

_A. A. Haldane._

-

_Dear Andy,_

_I don’t have words to say how happy I was to get your letter. I was worrying myself sick thinking about what might happen while I was gone—and I see that I was right to worry. But I am relieved to hear that you are going home. So am I. In fact, I am home, more or less, because your letter chased me across the ocean and caught me in California. I’m catching a train tomorrow morning that will take me to Parris Island, where I will report to the C.O. and be granted 72 hours of leave to visit my parents and my brothers and sisters, before the Marines put me back to work._

_Come visit me. Get assigned to Parris Island if you can, because I know there will be plenty of raw recruits who could use your help. But even if you can’t, come visit me. My folks’ place is only seven or eight hours away from South Carolina, so we can go whenever I have a minute’s leave and I’ll show you the house and the mountains and everything I’ve missed. I’ll honor every promise I’ve ever made, you can count on that._

_Yours always,_

_Eddie Jones_

 


End file.
